Mono / World End's Girlfriend / The Drift
By Tim Bugbee
Monday. May 21, 12:01 AM
live at The Middle East Downstairs (Cambridge, MA) April 12th, 2007.

Temporary Residence, like all good small labels, maintains a laser-like focus to the bands they sign and the records they release. Having made their firm stamp on the landscape via the excellent Travels in Constants subscription series (both editions), they've also tended to their post-rock manger with a firm, guiding hand. And about that “post-rock” branding… I hate lazy pigeonholing via labels as much as the next guy, but “post-rock” is far easier to type as compared to “instrumental guitar-led, vocal-less music which builds from a single grain of sand and turns into a monolith, only to crash down in shards on the listener's heads when the tension is finally released.”

Alright then. First band we are treated to is The Drift, whose EP was in the final Travels in Constants installment, mark II. Hailing from San Fran (not too many bands come from there anymore, it seems; too expensive to live on a musician's budget?), they exhibit the main calling cards of the post-rock ghetto, yet stake out a fair bit of new turf via skillfully played acoustic double bass (both bowed and fingered), and also weaving keyboards and trumpet into the mix. Limber drumming knits it together and pushes it along. Drifting, though not aimlessly. They could benefit from a few stronger motifs to help keep the songs memorable, but all in all a good opener.

World's End Girlfriend (nom de guitar of Katsuhiko Maeda) then took the reins, hair in samurai top knot, and settled in a chair for the better part of the next 40 minutes. Aside from his guitar, the table to his right had a Mac laptop, a sampler, and a bunch of other electronics. Effects pedals were strewn about, more than a centipede could reasonably accommodate. World’s End Girlfriend has been involved with at least one recording with Mono, but he's plowing a completely different part of the field. Loops, buzzes, snippets of conversation (though not by him), clean and distorted guitar playing, all executed with an unchanging mien. Some challenging sounds, some passages of gentle, simple beauty, well turned out on both fronts.

The last time I saw Mono was when they had the support slot for Pelican, and the set was top heavy with material from the excellent 2006 platter You Are There. Tonight would be no different (an amazing "The Flames Beyond the Cold Mountain" really got things off to a great start, and we also got "Yearning" and "Moonlight" later on. Still no "Kidnapper Bell," though...). That said, with such sprawling instrumentals and no lyrics to use for easy memory stamps, it's tough to recall specific song titles from the overall set, and it's highly possible they slipped in one or two new songs from the new EP The Phoenix Tree (also the last release on the second Travels in Constants series), which tackles the WWII bombings of Hiroshima. Mono's songs can be akin to weather patterns: no stationary fronts, but more plunging barometric readings as placid skies gradually transition to massed thunderheads, to sudden, sustained release; torrential downpours and gale force winds whipping furiously, finally yielding back to calm and quiet. Though sometimes seated, there was no lack of intensity to the playing of guitarists Goto and Yoda, and the up-the-middle tandem of bassist Tamaki and drummer Takada kept the fires well-stoked. Mono have successfully veered far enough away from the mid-period Mogwai sound which I felt they were too tightly latched to; the New York Soundtracks release was an important one for them, and really stands out as an inflection point of their development trajectory. Live, the songs are just delivered that much more viscerally. Great show.

PS: According to Temporary Residence, Mmono will not be returning to play the U.S. until sometime in '09, so if you still have a chance to see them on the final stretches of this tour, I'd recommend it.
www.mono-jpn.com
www.thedriftmusic.com

Tim Bugbee

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